At our Christmas party this year, we did a white elephant gift exchange. One of my bosses brought this USB rocket launcher, basically, a nerf dart gun, powered by USB. Still, pretty darn cool. Turns out she got it at thinkgeek.com. I had never heard of the site, but when I checked it out, it was so cool.
So the other day, I noticed that she had a box for an Annoy-a-tron in her office. Now, this is one of the meanest things I saw on thinkgeek.com. An Annoy-a-tron is a small electric circuit board a little smaller than a business card with a built in battery and speaker and a magnet so you can hide it under the desk, chair leg, or whatever. What it does is at some interval ranging from 2 to 8 minutes, it makes a noise, such as an electonic beep.
I see the box for this and say, “You really bought that. That is the meanest thing I ever heard.”
“Would that drive you crazy?” she say.
“I would kill somebody. I’d get a gun and come in here blasting.” I say.
She says something to effect of, really? So I go on ranting and raving. She gets up and goes in my other boss’ office next door, and they both smile knowingly at each other. I totally didn’t pick this up. She walks out and down the hall toward my office. She reaches under my desk and pulls out this thing, hits a button, and a cricket chirp plays.
Now, I’d had a cricket in my office about two weeks, or so I thought. We really did have some crickets in the building. I know I heard them over by the bathrooms. So when one showed up in my office, I figured that one of them had migrated. I didn’t worry about it, because I knew there was nothing I could do about it.
When Mary and I were first married, we lived in an apartment about a half a block from a pet shop which sold reptiles and raised crickets. We always had crickets in our apartment, and there was nothing you could do about it. They would chirp, and you would look for them and they would stop chirping. So when one showed up in my office, I didn’t worry about it. There was no point. It never dawned on me that it was always one single chirp, and as the woman in the office down the hall, pointed out later, always 3 minutes apart. It also didn’t dawn on me that a cricket has a finite lifespan, and it had been there for weeks, and never moved nor changed its chirp. For all I know, it should have been an entire colony by now.
After she pulled out the device, we laughed, but then I started thinking. I can’t just let this slide. Ahh, revenge. Sweet revenge. Then again, she is my boss, and I do really like my job. This is going to take some careful planning. Revenge is a dish best served …, in a way that won’t get me fired.
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